Heroic : Garalon Holy paladin suggestions

Good morning,

After many attempts of helping myself going threw my logs with my GM and just being stumped, I've decided to make this thread.

I've been healing with my paladin since ICC . I would like to consider myself as a good holy paladin, but recent events have made me doubt myself. These events started on Heroic Garajal, a 2 healed fight where I could not keep my targets up at all. I've cause my guild many wipes, frustration and now its the same story for Heroic Garalon.

The raid comp is fairly simple :

Tanks
Prot paladin
Prot warrior

Healers
Me
Resto Shaman

DPS
Warlock
Hunter
Rogue
Shaman or Boomkin
Shadow Priest

Our GM which is a Holy priest has had to go Disc to carry my slack even as shadow hes had to throw shields and renews on my targets. No matter what I do it seems my heals are not going out properly. My current spec is as is on my armory profile : look up Xyalda -Uldaman US

The resto shaman is destroying my heals by about 20 to 30K HPS. Now Don't get me wrong as long as raid isn't dead numbers are the least of my worries, but people are dying. I've been letting resto shaman handle raid like hes supposed to, as for me I'm healing the tanks and pheromone target, should be simple enough correct?

Wrong. it feels like my targets are not at all getting healed or topped off. Holy shock is on CD, eternal flames is on all my targets and beacon is swapped depending on location of the kiter for pheromones . ( Not using PVP EF DP spec) Then its a simple use of Divine light and Holy light + some Light of dawn. I already know one of my biggest mistake is the use of HR on single target people. The rest thought is the same as usual.

For crush I usually bop the pheromone target and run to the stacking area to throw down hammer, pop Divine protection, then run back to a further location where i can actually reach my pheromones target+ tanks . I never stay stacked, I find myself running around constantly like a chicken with its head cut off.

I'm just looking at how others are handling this fight, if its really me or is it a strategy flaw that were failing to notice. With 2 healers + disc priest we've gotten him to about 8% before enrage , hence why I have to learn to 2 heal this fight..or any other 2 healed fight.

If you need to look at logs I can arrange that , but since they are private you will need a log in and I will accept you till the information is seen and spoken about. I've never actually put myself out there and asked for opinions so please If im missing any information you would like to know feel free to ask.

I would approach this the same similar to the way we do on normal. I have not done heroic as of yet so I'm not completely sure of how tight the enrage timer is. For us we tried to keep the outer legs up as we kited him around the room, this allowed for him to move at just the right speed for most of the ranged to stand in the middle of the room for the majority of the fight. Once we switch to that, healing became much easier. We had the melee kill the inner legs and told them to not run to the other side of the boss. I thought of garalon as a giant moving pillar that stuns and does a cone attack since you couldn't really heal people on the opposite site without running all the way around him. I would tell the dps with pheromones to use personal cd's during a crush in the event they got stunned on top of a pool. Again with the random crushes and added damage and health in heroic, I don't know how well that would work.

As for healing once I switched to using crusader strike the fight seemed to be much easier to heal for me. I would also avoid using LoD unless you really need to heal 5 people. With the constant damage from pheromones, the eternal flame hot seems ideal. I would consider getting rid of battle healer as I find its healing is really minimal. I would consider something like PoTI or Divine plea. Divine plea glyph because you nurf your eternal flame hots while its up, and PoTI because of heavy eternal flame blanketing.

As for Gara'jal many guilds that I have seen kill the boss used 3 healers, with one being an atonement priest(Paragon being on of them). My guild managed to kill it with only 2, but we were gifted with some of the best tanks one could ask for(which is where most of the damage goes through). There were times when a cd wasn't used by a tank or used at the wrong time where there was simply nothing I could do.

You might look into getting the 4pc PvP set and using Crusader Strike to generate HP, then blanketing the whole raid with 3 Holy Power Eternal Flames. Even after the nerf, the PvP set will probably be better than most gear, unless you're full heroic pieces in each of those slots, or have the 4pc PvE. I would continue to keep beacon on the pheromone target. A glyph switch to Blessed Life might be useful for when you get stunned by stomp. Avoid using Holy Radiance when people aren't stacked. It's better to cast a divine light on your beacon target to generate a HP.

A few things I notice is you have neither 4 piece pve or pvp, which is so huge it cannot be emphasized enough. You should convince your guild to give you chest no matter what and have a coin ready your self for both lfr+normal mode - even legs would be a gigantic upgrade. I personally still use 4 piece pvp after nerf and on this reset's Garalon it gave me 45 extra holy power - roughly half my total holy power (~30% less than last but still very worthwhile).

About Garalon... try and look at the fight from the perspective of how two healers can provide the maximum of healing. Ie, do you assign specific targets to healers and limit their spell choices or do you allow them to heal reactively and freely with their most mana efficient heals? I would highly recommend the last option not only on this fight but on 95% of all fights.
I would recommend you to aim to mainly heal with eternal flame, holy shock, holy radiance + daybreak and light's hammer (place correctly according to leg spawning). I do not use crusader strike as I prefer holy radiance for the actual healing and strongly dislike the uncertainty of the holy power generation.
It should be your goal to never single target heal anyone besides a tank or pheremone kiter 5-6 times during the entire fight, its simply too mana inefficient or a waste of cast time (you need a fair amount of eternal flames active for this to work, hence the need for either 4 piece bonus). Always keep eternal flame on tanks and they should be selfsuccient with prot paladin assist healing when a leg is not up anyway. Remember beacon of light has 60 yards range both for healing but also for switching around - hopefully that will help on running around. Also dont try to carry kiting + crush fuck ups, call people out on it or bop people with weak personals.

In terms of managing mana you will 100% struggle, but try and get innervate so you can continue doing radiance for maximum eternal flames. Its a tough fight and people have to help healers with personal cds practically on cooldown and general smart play.

Its hard to give more specific advice without logs, but aim for a minimum of 90k hps if you want to two heal.

Our 4 piece pvp set is no longer viable. You can only proc 1 holy power after a 3 power EF has been cast, as long as that EF is NOT a divine purpose proc. (DP heals do not give holy power).
I find the best way to heal this in a 10m environment is to solo heal everyone as mana efficiently as possible with keeping the pheramone target beaconed. I use holy shock on CD (only 4 seconds for me) and I holy light single targets. I also spec into Lights Hammer since the ranged are usually clustered (it helps for the crushes).
A big help for dps on the crushes: beacon a clothy dps right before the crush. That way they don't get stunned and can continue to dps. This helps a lot with clemency (you can bop 2 people during the fight). Do not glyph for seal of insight. Even though you're stunned, you don't get holy power for some wierd reason.

Our 4 piece pvp set is no longer viable. You can only proc 1 holy power after a 3 power EF has been cast, as long as that EF is NOT a divine purpose proc. (DP heals do not give holy power).
I find the best way to heal this in a 10m environment is to solo heal everyone as mana efficiently as possible with keeping the pheramone target beaconed. I use holy shock on CD (only 4 seconds for me) and I holy light single targets. I also spec into Lights Hammer since the ranged are usually clustered (it helps for the crushes).
A big help for dps on the crushes: beacon a clothy dps right before the crush. That way they don't get stunned and can continue to dps. This helps a lot with clemency (you can bop 2 people during the fight). Do not glyph for seal of insight. Even though you're stunned, you don't get holy power for some wierd reason.

Drop a tank for an extra dps and use the rogue as the second cleave soaker.
2.5 heal it with a hotw spec druid or disc priest. The 3rd healer should dps most of the fight and just help top people up for crushes.

For your personal healing it is hard to say anything without logs. Problem with 10m is people being really spread out with some dps on the back of the boss and people way out front kiting pheremones. If you can get as many people to stay stacked as possible and move as a group you can make more efficient use of Lights Hammer and even Light of Dawn only has 30yd range.

Ah I just read the logs are private.
Anyway I did this with PVP 4 set and EF blanketing, crusader strike for extra holy power. Thing is nobody needs to be at 100% health you just need to keep people topped up enough to survive a crush and getting a 30 second hot on the whole raid works really well and glyph beacon and switch it around to whoever needs the most healing. All the EF transfers to the beacon target which is nice. Dunno what else really. Private logs makes things hard to comment.

Originally Posted by mcbubble
Our 4 piece pvp set is no longer viable. You can only proc 1 holy power after a 3 power EF has been cast, as long as that EF is NOT a divine purpose proc. (DP heals do not give holy power).

You've been complaining about this in three different threads. This change must have REALLY upset you. I'm thankful that I never attempted to get that 4pc as I knew it was going to be nerfed.

Actually, I posted on two threads. I replied to this thread to give the OP some ideas, I then made a new post to make sure others knew that the 4 piece bonus was nerfed. My 3rd posting of the day was giving strat ideas about tsulong. I don't know - I'm in one of the top guilds 10m and I also have quite a bit of top 10 parses. Not tooting my own horn, just giving some advice that I thought would be useful. <insert I know right.jpg>

I actually like the playstyle of the pve set, so no, I'm not complaining, and no I'm not upset at all.

I think if you have the pvp 4 set then why not on fights like this. But by all means it isn't 100% needed to to this boss and is possible with gear levels of a progressing paladin walking into this fight.

Imo it's all about positioning like someone mentioned. It's much easier if you know where the raid will be at any given time (LH usage for example) spread your CDs over the fight as long as you know that you won't get any unexpected crushes. Make sure to communicate with other healer about cds you will use for next crush so you don't stack them and overkill one. Shaman are especially strong on this fight anyway.

Pheromone targets during crush should be using cds and moving quite a bit running up to crush, so they don't get stunned in a pool. BoP as a last resort when you can see that they're going to die from the crush.

Our 4 piece pvp set is no longer viable. You can only proc 1 holy power after a 3 power EF has been cast, as long as that EF is NOT a divine purpose proc. (DP heals do not give holy power).
I find the best way to heal this in a 10m environment is to solo heal everyone as mana efficiently as possible with keeping the pheramone target beaconed. I use holy shock on CD (only 4 seconds for me) and I holy light single targets. I also spec into Lights Hammer since the ranged are usually clustered (it helps for the crushes).
A big help for dps on the crushes: beacon a clothy dps right before the crush. That way they don't get stunned and can continue to dps. This helps a lot with clemency (you can bop 2 people during the fight). Do not glyph for seal of insight. Even though you're stunned, you don't get holy power for some wierd reason.

Our 4pc is still very very viable, just not as OP as it used to be. Any research on recent logs will prove this, we lost 3-5% total healing done from the nerf, but since the gear is upgradeable now etc, shouldnt be that big of a hit.

I probably wouldn't use battle healer, swap for protector of the innocent for Garalon.
DP is ok for it, I like to use HA to blanket 3hp EFs so I can plea comfortably without falling behind.
If you are tank healing then swap to execution sentence, lights hammer is less helpful especially when theres so much movement.

Originally Posted by Reignisevil

So basically here is the gist of it :

The resto shaman is destroying my heals by about 20 to 30K HPS. Now Don't get me wrong as long as raid isn't dead numbers are the least of my worries, but people are dying. I've been letting resto shaman handle raid like hes supposed to, as for me I'm healing the tanks and pheromone target, should be simple enough correct?

Wrong. it feels like my targets are not at all getting healed or topped off. Holy shock is on CD, eternal flames is on all my targets and beacon is swapped depending on location of the kiter for pheromones . ( Not using PVP EF DP spec) Then its a simple use of Divine light and Holy light + some Light of dawn. I already know one of my biggest mistake is the use of HR on single target people. The rest thought is the same as usual.

For crush I usually bop the pheromone target and run to the stacking area to throw down hammer, pop Divine protection, then run back to a further location where i can actually reach my pheromones target+ tanks . I never stay stacked, I find myself running around constantly like a chicken with its head cut off.

A resto shammy really shouldn't be able to outheal you in similar gear.
Make sure you always remember to turn Seal of Insight on (it turns off sometimes if you reglyph/respec).

If you are assigned to healing the tanks and the pheremones target then don't be afraid to let a few dps drop out of range so that you don't have to move as much. The shaman will do his job and get them if you have split up the raid that way.

I personally don't use light of dawn very much at all on this fight, its simply not as good for the slow, sustained aoe damage. You're better off putting EF on a target that doesnt already have EF. This is true even if you are tank healing as the beacon transfer is unbelievable. Personally I would choose to put beacon on the prot paladin. The warrior will generally require less healing as the paladin can do quite a bit of offhealing on him with wogs/FoLs.

As for Garajal, you have the perfect tanks for it so the voodoo dolls damage is as low as it could be. You just need to use your cooldowns for the solo heal patches. A really great tip for doing this is whenever you get the chance to do so, spam DL on the tank. The mastery shield ends up negating a LOT of damage. You didn't give us as much detail as you did for Garalon so its hard to say much else.

*edit: thought id toss in my fraps of garajal heroic (2healed with a resto druid, no disc) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VExMl_saKSo - I keep forgetting to fraps heroic garalon but ive got normal up on the same channel if you're interested, spell selection is pretty similar.

I don't have experience with this fight on 10 man and even on 25 am not put in charge of Pheremone targets, but this is the set up I run:

EF and DP with four set PvP Bonus. Despite the nerf to its interactions with DP it is still worth it if used properly. The only four spells you should be casting are HR, CS, HS, and EF itself. Spending mana and time to cast HL or FoL is pointless when running this set up (at least on 25).

Divinity, DP, and Protector of the Innocent. I think that Battle Healer is honestly useless for us. Even if you're constantly meleeing it doesn't do much because a Holy Paladins melee attacks don't do any real damage.

Strategy wise, I cast only the spells I mentioned above with the exception of cooldowns. I prioritize HS, and CS above all else. Since DP no longer provides HP through the bonus, you want to cast a spell that will provide more HP first to keep it flowing. I try to use LH on a as many people as possible as a Crush is about to go off, and tend to pop cooldowns after Crush if the group needs stabilizing.

I'd also advise that if you have to kite pheremones yourself that you wait until Phase 2 where the group takes a lot less damage and kiting isn't as strenuous.